


you, and i, and no one else.

by winterwinterwinter



Category: Fargo (TV)
Genre: "Mostly" Canon Compliant, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, canon-typical weirdness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2019-08-05 19:16:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 10,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16373465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterwinterwinter/pseuds/winterwinterwinter
Summary: “...as she fled, eurydice was bitten on the ankle by a snake, and she collapsed, and died instantly. orpheus, her betrothed, sang his grief, and all living things were moved by his sorrow. protected by the gods, orpheus traveled to the underworld to see his beloved once more.”





	1. prologue: january 1986.

**Author's Note:**

> isn't writing fix-it fics a rite of passage in the fargo fandom?

wrench and numbers were laying on the hood of their car, shoulder-to-shoulder, staring up at the sky, navy-dark. they were bundled in heavy coats, as they always seemed to be.

“i think we missed it,” numbers said around his chattering teeth. five layers, five days’ worth of stubble on his chin and cheeks, and still the chill seeped into his skin.

wrench beside him didn’t say anything, couldn't say anything. he hadn't seen numbers speak, eyes riveted on the heavens above, and he definitely hadn't heard it. so he kept his eyes on the sky.

“hey,” numbers said, “isn’t this thing gonna pass by again, like… tomorrow?” he was nudging at wrench, pushing him. he pushed and prodded, watched wrench’s face slowly crease with annoyance.

 _what is your problem?_ wrench finally said, sitting up and turning toward numbers.

 _problem is i’m dying out here,_ numbers said, _and we still have to toss that asshole in the trunk._

wrench stared at him, his sour expression one numbers was too familiar with. _you never give a fuck about what i want to do,_ he said.

“kidding me?” numbers said. “are you kidding me right now?” _you’re starting_ this _now?_

you _started it,_ wrench said, hopping off the hood, stalking around to the trunk, effectively ending the discussion by turning his back, a trick numbers was too familiar with. a trick numbers himself pulled embarrassingly often.

“what, come back,” numbers said, kicking off and following after him. he grabbed wrench’s arm, tried to get his eyes on him, but wrench twitched out of his hold and opened the trunk instead. inside laid their latest assignment, a black hole between his brows. wrench stared down at him, seemed to be weighing his options. numbers stared as well, considering his next move. the last thing he wanted was for wrench to stay pissy all night.

numbers grabbed at wrench’s arm again, tugging gently at the sleeve of his coat. wrench offered him only his eyes, kept his body straight and still and pointed toward the car.

“baby,” numbers said, _it’s just a star._ and he wore his tenderest expression, let his eyes go soft and big, the way he knew wrench was weak for. _  
_

wrench rolled his eyes, scowled. god, did wrench have an ugly scowl. numbers hated it. _it’s not even a star, dipshit,_ he said.

 _whatever the fuck it is,_ numbers said.

 _ball of ice,_ wrench said.

“oh, great,” numbers said, gesturing grandly at the snow around them. “like there aren’t already enough of those.”

wrench reached past the corpse, his eyes still wide-open in fear, and grabbed for the auger. he heaved it from the trunk, and instead of passing it off to numbers, like usual, he swung it over his shoulder and stalked out toward the black, frozen lake.

“what?” numbers said. he stumbled over the snow, ankle-deep, following wrench again. he slapped at his back - thumped at his back. wrench turned sharply, nearly brained numbers with the auger. _that’s my job._

wrench didn’t move the auger from his shoulder. he took a hand from it, and shoved his middle finger at numbers. he continued toward the lake.

it took numbers longer than he’d like to admit to get the guy from the trunk to the ice, sliding out to the middle where wrench stood, auger leaning against his leg, ice open and gaping at his feet. wrench was the muscle, and, if numbers was honest with himself, most of the time he was the brain, too. wrench was stronger, could throw marks around no problem. numbers was... numbers was lacking, in the strength department. and so with great effort he tugged the guy across the ice, and he felt wrench's eyes on his back as he single-handedly slid the guy into the dark, twisting water, stuffing him in feet-first.

when numbers straightened out, he was greeted by wrench doing an exaggerated impression of him, pulling at an invisible corpse with effort, barely able to make it move, face crumpled with mockery. “what-the-fuck-ever, man,” numbers said, turning and walking back toward the car. he tucked himself into the passenger seat once he got there, and listened to wrench’s boots crunch the snow underfoot until he fell into the seat next to him, auger stowed.

 _sorry we missed your C-E-L-E-S-T-I-A-L hail,_ numbers said before wrench could turn the car on. wrench glared.

 _sorry you’re sleeping on the floor tonight,_ wrench said.

“it’s not even a star!” numbers said. “it’s fucking ice!” _why do you care about this?_

 _it doesn’t matter!_ wrench said. _it shouldn’t matter why. all that should matter is that i do, and you should respect that._

 _i’m not respecting flashing lights in the sky,_ numbers said, settling into his seat and looking out the window at nothing. the barren trees, the dim porch lights on the horizon, the gravel-dark snow along the road.

the car roared to life. and they sped off.

 

 


	2. chapter one.

 

"suddenly, nothing is as it was  
where are you, orpheus?  
wasn’t it always the two of us -  
weren’t we birds of a feather?"

"hey, little songbird," anaïs mitchell.

 

 

 

grady opened his eyes.

he was sitting at a counter in a bar, that much he was certain of. the dark wood, the musky smell, the low lights... he looked around, taking stock of the delicate swedish flag patterned bunting hanging over the bar; vikings memorabilia scattered across the walls, next to dusty pictures of strangers, framed tickets, and mounted bric-a-brac - the heads of slain deer, a dark civil war-era rapier. it felt familiar, in the way that it felt like every single bar grady had ever been to in his life, but it also felt familiar like grady had really, honestly been there before - sometime, somewhere...

he noticed a bartender, toiling over some glasses in the corner. grady rapped at the counter. the bartender turned, and grady saw his drawn, gaunt face and hollow, haunted eyes. “buddy,” he said. or, tried to say. he found that all that came out of his mouth was a rough, raspy wheeze. he tried to clear his throat, and it worked, but - “b-” nothing but a feeble little noise that died in his throat.

at that moment, grady met his own eyes in the mirror mounted behind the counter, which reflected mostly bottles of booze, and taps, and glasses, and he nearly fell out of his seat.

there, across his throat, was a deep, angry, messy slash. still open, still ruby-red, still tender. yet, he didn't feel it - no pain, no sting. and then, it all came crashing back to him -

the job, the blizzard. the bastard - _malvo_.

malvo. malvo, and -

wrench? grady thought, glancing around. the bar was empty, besides himself and the bartender. he could see through a window on the far wall snow falling hard and fast. wes?

grady jolted, stumbling off his stool and heading for the door, but halfway there he was stopped by a handsome older man in a suit who seemed to appear out of nowhere, stepping smoothly into his path suddenly. “not so fast, my friend,” he said. “we’ve much to discuss, and you’ve only just gotten here.”

 _who are you, fuckhead?_ grady signed, angry hands striking down like lightning. it didn't occur to him that the guy probably didn't understand asl, probably didn't know what grady was flapping his hands around for.

the man laughed, a hand on grady’s shoulder, trying to steer him back to his seat.

 _wrench!_ grady said, _i have to go find wrench!_ and he tried, he did, to wrestle out of the man’s grip, which wasn’t particularly firm at all, but he couldn’t, for some reason. the man had him sitting in a stool beside him in moments.

“do you mind if i order for you?” the man said, turning to grady. his knee brushed grady’s, and grady recoiled. he glared at the guy, shook his head. “oh, wonderful. sir? my companion and i…”

grady tuned him out. his mind slid back to wrench - wes, _wes_ \- out in the snow. was he alright? did he get the guy? did he know grady was here, in this bar, heart pounding as his mind raced, worrying after him? they should have never split up, not with that pathetic visibility, that fucking blizzard - they both knew they were better as a team, always, always. if they had just tossed nygaard into that hole the other day, if wes had just ignored his fucking conscience for once, if if if -

 _am i dead?_ grady asked the man.

the man smiled at him. “with that awful gash, my friend, i’d be surprised if you weren’t,” he said. just then, the bartender set a glass before each of them - something honey-brown for grady - whiskey, probably - and sherry for the man.

dead.

grady was dead.

grady took a deep breath. he could deal with dead, just give him a minute - just a fucking minute and he could deal with it. couldn’t say he hadn’t expected it, thought it’d come sooner rather than later. sooner than 2006. _is wrench okay?_ grady said, hands shaking.

the man’s smile didn’t waver. “he’s not doing so well at the moment,” he said. “no use in lying to you, grady. but he will be fine, in the end. that much, that much i can assure you.”

grady stared at the man as he gazed down into his glass. grady nodded, to himself, to no one. with a hesitation defeated by the impulse of his hand, he threw back his drink. it burned his throat, and stung his wound - he was making a strangled, little noise - probably the most noise he could make - and gripping his neck, thumping his glass and fist on the bar.

“careful,” the man said next to him. no shit, grady thought as the sting abated. he glared at him. the man just smiled serenely. “still hurts, sometimes, in this place.”

 _you said we have something to discuss,_ grady said.

“oh, yes,” the man said. “hm. where to start?

“you’ve been mr. numbers for the past... twenty-odd years, if i'm doing my math right,” the man said. “you remember who you were before?”

grady could never forget. he had tried - god, he had tried. tried to erase everything he’d ever been: a snivelling brat, a wild child with a bad habit of biting other kids, a pathetic excuse for a rebel who shoplifted cigarettes from the corner store. but wes never let him forget. a murmur in the dark, their bodies bare and slick against each other. his name, spelled out in anger. his birthday, celebrated every november, some gift laid out on their bed. a new knife, a fancy cigar, a pair of cufflinks.

grady nodded.

“grady levin,” the man said. “he didn’t have many choices, did he?”

 

*

 

**2006.**

 

the day they left for bemidji, wrench woke up to numbers curled up next to him, chin nearly resting on his shoulder, eyes heavy and half-open and staring. “morning,” numbers had mumbled.

 _watching me sleep?_ wrench said. numbers had nodded, slow and sluggish. he’d never been a morning person. _entertained?_

numbers didn’t respond. he instead kissed wrench’s shoulder so lightly and so gently it might not have been a kiss at all. might have been an accident. “hold me,” he said, mouth slow and obscured by wrench’s shoulder, by numbers’s beard.

wrench hadn’t gotten a good read. _what?_ he said.

 _hold me,_ numbers said, hands limp and lazy. he had turned away from wrench, then, rolling onto his side. wrench blinked at his back, wiped at one eye before he settled onto his side and drew in close, close against numbers’s back, lining their bodies up. numbers felt for his arm and tugged it over his side, cradling it against his chest. wrench flexed his hand, and held numbers’s t-shirt in a loose, possessive grip.

they dozed off, then, for a half-hour at most. wrench was last to wake up again, opening his eyes as numbers slid out from under his arm, movements fluid and alert.

 _come on,_ numbers had said once he’d turned and seen wrench laying there, wide awake. _long day ahead, baby._

the trailer wrench grew up in had one bathroom, and in that bathroom there had been no tub. just a pink-tiled shower stall. when he grew too big for the kitchen sink, his mother would bathe him by sitting on the floor of the stall in her ugly green one-piece bathing suit, plugging the drain with a soaked washcloth. she’d fill the shower up, about ankle-high, if you were standing, sometimes more if she was feeling generous. she would hand wrench his rubber ducks, and as he splashed around she would carefully, gently wash his hair, his body.

wrench remembered his baths, and his mother, everyday when he stepped into the shower stall in the bathroom of his and numbers’s apartment, sometimes by himself, sometimes with his partner. he remembered his mother, her baby face, her beautiful curly hair, as he washed his own face, his own hair. he remembered his mother, who he hadn’t seen in fifteen, nearly twenty years. who he hadn’t written in ten.

wrench tipped his head back into the spray, which was rapidly turning lukewarm. he let out a long breath, cupping his hands before him and gathering water in his palms for no reason other than to gather it, and let it spill.

he had shut off the water, and wrapped his towel around his shoulders.

 

 

wrench hobbled out of his stolen car, a burgundy mazda capella with burgundy automatic seatbelts, through the powder-soft snow, and around the back of the little salmon-colored house that looked exactly the same as all the other houses in the cul-de-sac. in his hand dangled a little plastic bag, filled with stolen painkillers, stolen gauze, stolen scissors, and a brand-new electric razor. hands wrapped in gloves, he managed the back door with a lady’s hairpin he’d stolen off the rack in the convenience store. the house came open easy, and wrench was inside, and it was just as cold as the outside.

it was a ghost town. a sign at the top of the street had proclaimed in bright, bulging blue wordart that “quiet valley” was coming in summer 2006. the house at the very end, near the street, was still framework, bare bones shivering in the snow. the house wrench stumbled into was finished, an empty shell, a gaping maw.

the water was working. so was the electricity. and so wrench tucked himself away in the first bathroom he came across, and he plugged the razor in, and with no hesitation he began shaving his face, and his head. by the end he was staring at himself with a shabby buzzcut, face bare for the first time in - god, four years? he rubbed at his cheeks, brushing off loose hairs, and pushed away the thoughts that sprang up - cheeks, chubby cheeks, beard, baby, numbers, _grady_ \- and blinked furiously, squeezing the tears back in. no, he thought, not here. not yet.

wrench gathered the curls up, tossed them into the salt-speckled plastic lunch baggy he found in the console of his stolen ride. the rest, the so-super-small hairs he couldn’t sweep up in his palms, he washed down the drain.


	3. chapter two.

**1981.**

 

“grady,” his mother said when he dragged his feet through the front door, “letter for you.”

“what?” grady said. grady only got letters - cards - from his grandparents, on his birthday. he took it from her hand as he passed her on the couch, glancing down at it as he started up the stairs. he nearly stumbled when his eyes caught the handwriting, so loopy and familiar, and fell on the return address in the corner.

grady slammed his bedroom door shut, dropped his backpack and flung himself onto his bed. he ripped the envelope open, and recoiled in surprise when he thrust his hand in and felt something unexpectedly... soft. he turned the envelope upside-down, and out tumbled a lock of hair, followed by the letter itself.

he took the curl in one hand, the letter in the other. “what the hell?” he said, looking at the little tuft in his palm. he looked at the letter, a little half-sheet, and read:

_ grady - _

_ i have a small room in dad’s house, it used to be the sitting room but now it’s mine. he shaved my head the night i got here because he said my hair was too long for a man. i told him to go to hell and he smacked me around. _

there was a whole line scribbled out, gone over again and again with pen. grady could make out a handful of letters, but they were meaningless without the words around them.

_ write me back okay? _

_ w. _

grady pressed the letter to his chest and closed his fist around the curl. he took a deep breath and breathed slowly out his nose. his heart was beating fast under his hand, fluttering like a hummingbird's wings.  


he sat on his bed, silent and still but for the thump of his heart, for a few minutes. he got up and folded himself into his desk chair, slipping the letter back into its envelope and setting it off to the side. he opened the top drawer of his desk, and tucked the curl away in an old, empty crayon box.  


he grabbed at his math notebook, forgotten that morning, and flipped it open.

_ w - _

_ i miss _

and grady bit at his lip, chastising himself. he scribbled it out.

_ i want to _

and he scribbled it out again.

_ i wish you _

he made a noise, a little grumble of displeasure low in his throat. he caked the offending words in black ink, trying to ignore the echoes in the cave of his mind: i miss you, i want to see you again, i wish you had kissed me a long time ago.

grady tore the page from the notebook and crumpled it into a little ball. he looked down at the new page and started again.

_w,_ he wrote. _don’t let that bastard push you around either. if he does anything i’ll kill him myself -_

  
  


grady stepped through the automatic doors of the supermarket. he was hunched over, back to the wind, and when he walked across the linoleum threshold, heat rushing his bones, he straightened out. he wiggled his fingers around the five in his pocket - he wasn’t going to steal, wasn’t in the mood. just wanted his trashy onion snacks to eat in lieu of his mother’s godforsaken roasted chicken.

he was halfway to the snack aisle when he looked up and saw her rounding the corner - meredith, wes’s mother, with a gallon of milk under one arm, a basket hanging from her other hand. grady stopped in his tracks.

he remembered the day wes left - only a week before. grady was banned from the randall house, had been since the incident, but he wasn’t letting wes leave without saying goodbye, at least. no fucking way. he had climbed the big tree in the backyard, the one right outside wes’s bedroom window, and tapped feebly at the glass, even though he knew wes couldn’t hear it.

wes looked, though, eventually. turned and saw grady shivering out there, clinging to the branch he was perched on. wes had flung the window open and hauled grady in, and grady had banged his head on the pane, but he barely felt it.  


_i’ll come visit you,_ grady said. _i’ll kidnap you and bring you back._

_you can’t drive,_ wes said, cracking a sad smile despite the sad crease in his forehead.

_whatever,_ grady said. _why is she -_

_it’s not your fault,_ wes said. like hell it isn’t, grady thought. _she just wants me to spend time with him._

_didn’t he beat her when you were a kid?_ grady said. wes’s wrists, hands, twitched but he didn’t try to refute grady.

they stood there awkwardly before each other. grady looked at their feet, but he could feel wes’s eyes on him, unwavering.

grady looked up. _so when do you think you’ll get to come back?_ he started to say, but wes grabbed his cheeks, suddenly, and then they were kissing.

kissing.

grady fell back into himself, shaking the memory from his mind with a twitch of his head. he realized he was staring at meredith. meredith who was getting closer, not watching her path, eyes scanning the little grocery list in her hand.

grady felt a fire spread through his body, hotter and deeper than the head that had greeted him when he walked in. he closed the distance between them with hard, lurching steps and yanked the milk from its cradle in her arm. she stumbled back a bit, looking affronted before her eyes jumped up to his face and a shadow of fear fell over her features.

grady said nothing, with his mouth or his hands. he hefted the gallon of milk over his head and threw it to the ground as hard as he could, channeling all of his anger, his sadness, his desire into it. it exploded, and milk darkened their shoes, their pant legs, and pooled on the floor.

grady turned and ran from the supermarket, almost slipping in a puddle of milk on his way out.


	4. chapter three.

grady closed his eyes, trailed his fingers up and down his empty glass. he felt like he’d been in the bar for a hundred years already. he felt like he’d just gotten there. he felt the heavy throb of his head, all the tension in his shoulders. like he was balancing the world on them and couldn’t help trembling with the pressure.

“does every person - human, excuse me - deserve love. tenderness, maybe?”

grady breathed hard through his nose, and he opened his eyes and he turned to the man, who was already looking at him, and he said _no_.

 

**1983.**

 

there was no one in the car but grady, and grady was scrubbing the tears from his eyes with the back of one hand, the denim of his jacket cuff biting at the skin around his eyes. it was dark out. snow had fallen on the drive up and forced grady’s windshield wipers. on the drive back, flurries flew at the car every few moments and stuck to the glass.

grady roared and turned the radio up, up, up until he could feel his every follicle vibrate on the beat. he clenched the steering wheel in his fists and let out another pathetic, anguished roar, more tears slipping out of his eyes.

“fuck you too!” he shouted, his rough voice drowned out by neil finn: _hey now, hey now, don’t dream it’s over._ “ _fuck_ you!”

he was just outside town, almost home, when he hit the patch of ice and went skidding into the snow at the side of the road.

grady didn’t know how long he was unconscious. minutes, an hour? in the darkness of his mind he saw wes’s face from that afternoon, seeing grady parked outside his school. haunted - confused - sad.

 _what are you doing here?_ wes had said.

and grady had grinned, had been grinning since he’d seen wes walk out of the building, wearing his shabby brown corduroy shearling jacket, hands holding the straps of his backpack over his shoulders, hair buzzed. _kidnap you,_ grady said. _take you home._

wes stared. _you can’t,_ he said.

 _yeah, i can,_ grady said. _got wheels,_ and he patted the hood of the car, his dad’s, _can go anywhere. don’t even have to go home, we could just run. go anywhere you want._ and he winked, and grinned wider, despite the look on wes’s face.

 _i missed you,_ wes said.

 _so come home,_ grady said. _or just come and we’ll go anywhere. come with me._

and wes said _i can’t._

 

 _please,_ wes said, throwing open the car door, _can we get away from here first. give me the keys._

wes drove them to a pharmacy, parked as far away from the front as possible.

 _you’re not gonna come with me,_ grady said.

 _no,_ wes said.

 _but why,_ grady said. _why stay here. i drove all the way here._

 _i didn’t ask you to,_ wes said.

grady raised a hesitant hand, waiting for wes to flinch or shift away, and when he didn’t, grady laid his hand on wes’s head, the short hairs of his buzzcut poking at his skin. it was soft. grady set his other hand on wes’s head, too, and then he slid them down to hold wes’s cheeks between them.

“please,” grady said. “i just want you to come back with me.”

wes’s eyes were glued to his mouth, as they had to be when grady was speaking. but seeing him, focusing so hard on the shapes of grady’s lips - a desire ran through grady. not just carnal, though it was there: a fast, hot rush that made his heart stumble. no, a desire ran through grady to tuck wes away against his chest and hold him there, keep him safe from bastards with clippers and backstabbing bitches.

 _sometimes i’m scared of you,_ wes said. grady felt it, a javelin through his heart, a knife in his back, and then wes kissed him. a hard kind of kiss, firm and feeling very sure of itself. grady tightened his grip on wes’s face, and he felt one tentative hand on his shoulder.

why would you be scared of me, grady thought as wes kissed him again, both hands on either shoulder, now. i’m not scary - i just love you.

though grady had known it all along, secret knowledge folded into him, tucked away for years and years and years, it still hit him like a wave and shook him to his core. i love you, i love you, he thought, pulling his knees onto the seat, trying to crawl over the center console - _i love you_.

  

 _i have something here,_ wes had said, after the kissing, _i'm doing well in school, i have a job on the weekends._

 _so i was the problem?_ grady said. _me? i was your problem?_

 _no,_ wes said, but grady knew the truth - had known it a while, since wes's letter dated september 1982: _i'm taking a few ap classes. i'm taking care of myself these days, dad doesn't bother me so much except to cut my hair._

“sorry i made your life so fuckin' hard,” grady growled at himself. “sorry i held you back.”

 _i never said you were the problem,_ wes said. _i think about you every goddamn hour of every goddamn day -_

 _i don't think about you,_ grady said, the worst lies he'd ever told in all seventeen years of his life spilling from his hands, _i don't think about you_ ever _. i just drove here because i could, that's what dropping out of school does, frees up your whole fucking day._

 _i want us to be together again after i graduate,_ wes said. _thick as thieves?_

grady's heart had nearly stopped. together? he thought, together? _so what,_ he said, _you're gonna fuck off and live a life and read some stupid fucking books and come back for me and collect me just like that? am i supposed to wait for you?_

wouldn't you want to? grady read all across wes's face. wouldn't i want to? he thought. and he knew he would wait for wes for a hundred years - two hundred, a thousand - if it meant at the end of his waiting they would always be by each other's side. but grady was young, and grady was dumb, and grady was hurt -

“fuck you - fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i don't ask for much. let me have don't dream it's over three years early.


	5. chapter four.

_dad didn’t kick me out when i dropped out because i got a job right away,_ grady said, tapping idly on his glass. _kicked me out on my ass after i got out of the hospital though. not before he got one last hit in. black eye._ grady still remembered it, too. how it felt. his father’s knuckles digging into his skin, and the way he’d fallen to the ground like a sack of sand.

“hm,” the man said, a deep, low rumble in his throat. just the kind grady wasn’t sure he could make again.

 _mom…_ grady paused, remembering his mother for the first time in a long time. margaret and her long, beautiful dark hair, that awful laugh of hers, as contagious as it was ugly. _mom had a friend with an empty room._ grady didn’t have to tell the man that he’d instructed his mother to fuck off and never speak to him again. mr. tripoli offered him a room instead, in exchange for what grady would one day realize was, ultimately, his soul.

 _love is a drag,_ grady said. he felt around his coat pocket, discovered the cigarettes he’d stowed there the morning of - the… the morning of. _tenderness is a scam. can i smoke in here?_

the man chuckled. he inclined his head and raised a hand - _go ahead._ grady lit up. “oh, what company you are,” he said. and from anyone else - any other person on earth - it would’ve been sarcastic. a not-so-subtle _fuck you._ grady had gotten plenty of those, before. but the man, ethereal as he was mysterious, had said it, and he sounded completely sincere. like he was perfectly content to sit side by side with grady in purgatory. “i will miss you, when the time comes.”

 _i was quitting,_ grady said, cigarette locked between his lips, ignoring for a moment the man's implication of _time_ and that something would happen at the end of it. _didn’t bring any on the assignment. just a pack of N-I-C-O-R-E-T-T-E. job was giving me such an ulcer i was chewing four a day._ he'd bought the cigarettes before their staged bar fight and ignored wes's ugly, disappointed scowl. _  
_

“quitting?” the man said.

 _his idea,_ grady said. _saw me smoking in the mornings before breakfast or coffee, and he finally snapped. said "i want you to stop, if you’re gonna die, die in a firefight, not in a hospital bed.”_ and it would’ve been sweet, if wes hadn’t been such a bitch about it. if they hadn't gotten into such a row about it, wes slamming grady's shoulders into the wall of their bedroom, grady using his hands to push and shove instead of speak.

the man chuckled, and grady looked over at him again. _when will the time come?_ he said.

the man took in a deep breath, sighed. took a sip of his sherry. “that’s a question, friend,” he said. “it’s different for everyone. i’m not quite sure what they want with you yet. if they want you at all. they've been very vague.

“i think we might have to wait for your dear friend,” he said. “wes, correct?”

 _we’ll have to wait a long fucking time,_ grady said, grinning around his cigarette. _wes isn’t dying anytime soon. he’s always been smarter than me._ but even as he said it, doubt flooded his stomach. they’d split up in that mess, and malvo was a fucking monster. had torn into grady's neck like it was nothing. it didn’t take long before he felt the panic setting in, the horror. what could that wolf do to wrench? what _couldn't_ he do? and grady, he was sitting there in a phantom bar, and he had no way of knowing - he had no way to _know_ -

“you said... love is a drag,” the man said, derailing grady’s burgeoning anxiety attack. grady glanced at him. “that’s an interesting sentiment from someone who has been as lucky as you, isn’t it.”

 _lucky?_ grady said.

“yes. lucky,” the man said. he set both hands on the bar. “don’t you consider yourself to be? many people never have what you and your friend have had for so long, you know. devotion, unconditional love. that sort of thing.”

grady snorted and looked around for an ashtray, surprised when he suddenly found one sitting right in front of him. it was glass, elegant and colorful. he stubbed his cigarette out, even though he’d only smoked half of it. _it wasn’t unconditional,_ he said.

“what’s that?” the man said.

 _it wasn’t unconditional,_ grady said again. _how? i treated him like dirt. come on, you know that, you can see my memories or something, can’t you?_ that was the impression he’d been under. grady was dead, and this guy - this man - had to be some sort of otherworldly agent, some being with more power and perception than grady could ever fathom. or something like that. fantasy and science fiction were more wes's thing.

the man laughed. “oh, no. no, no, no,” he said, half-mumbling. he shook his head like he couldn’t believe what grady had suggested. “your memories? i can’t see them. would you really want me to?” and he winked at grady, and if grady were twenty years stupider and much more alive than he was at that moment, he would’ve made a bad decision.

actually - grady glanced around at the bar again, like he had when he'd first opened his eyes and found himself there. the lights, the bunting, the smell. grady suddenly remembered it all: purgatory was the old bar down the street from that first place in fargo, the one he spent too many lonely nights in, looking for handsome, poor choices on two legs. he could've laughed, if the memories didn't make his body hot with shame - the bathroom walls he spent so much time inside of that he'd felt compelled to try carving his name into them, the men that bit his neck before he knew he liked that kind of thing, the way the tiled floor felt under his knees...

 _so why do you know things?_ grady said eloquently. he fiddled with his carton of cigarettes again, pulling some out halfway before tapping them back in, one by one.

“they’ve told me what i need to know,” the man said.

grady looked in the mirror. his eyes zeroed in on the raw, ripped flesh of his neck. his front was caked in blood. he gingerly touched his scarf and wilted, feeling how stiff it was with dried blood under his fingers. it was his favorite for no other reason than that wes had gotten it for him. the day wes had given it to him, he’d thrown it around his neck and used it to pull him in for a kiss. grady felt the heat under his eyes, staring at it ruined in his hand. grady looked at his face and caught his own eyes in the mirror. he looked pale. he looked like a ghost, a specter of himself.

grady’s hands shook as he grabbed another cigarette. _who are they?_ he said once he’d lit up and taken the first drag. the sting of the nicotine on his lips was toxic and familiar, shade in a desert. _am i going to be punished?_

“punishment,” the man said. “punishment. what does punishment teach? not to steal from the cookie jar, not to pull anna mae’s pigtails when the teacher isn’t looking… you were punished before.”

grady felt it - the phantom sting of his father’s open palm on his cheek. heard it, the heavy sound of a cell door sliding shut.

“what good did it do you?” the man said.

grady looked away.

“what good did it do him?”

 

*

 

**2006.**

 

 

wrench stopped at a crossroads.

it might’ve been romantic, to someone. the road, lit only by moonlight for miles, washed in silver and blue. the snow, receding but still glowing under the light. it might’ve even been romantic to him, once. the kind of thing he might've stopped the car for, the kind of thing that would've annoyed grady. _why are we stopping?_ he might've said. _it's just the moon._

wrench blinked and realized he was gazing longingly at the passenger seat and wishing, and hoping… he shook his head and looked back toward the road. blinked in disbelief.

sitting there in the center of the crossroads, where before there had been nothing, and just barely out of reach of wrench's headlights, was a figure. shrouded in darkness, as if the moon refused to shine on them, perched on a - trunk? suitcase? they noticed him as he noticed them. they stood up straight, stretched their arms up, arching their back, and ambled over.

wrench's hand went to his pocket, the box cutter he’d stolen, his only option. he watched the figure, no less shadowed, as they approached. they knocked soundlessly on wrench's window. wrench's other hand went to the pad he’d stolen, the front page already scrawled upon: _deaf._ he pressed it against the window.

the figure shrugged. made a motion for him to hand it over.

wrench rolled the window down just a little. just enough to shove the notepad and pen through. he watched intently as the figure took it, watched intently as they scribbled. he tried to note all their movements, tried to take stock of them, but the shadows, which seemed to defy logic, made it difficult.

they pressed the notepad against the window, just as he had. need a ride, it said, punctuated with a shaky little smiley face. wrench grimaced and gripped the box cutter tighter.

the figure put pen back to paper. wrench couldn't see their eyes, but he could feel them on him, tracing his body and his face. not dangerous, they wrote, accompanied by another smiley face.

wrench shook his head, half disbelief, half refusal. the figure’s shoulders shook, a laugh? _understand,_ they signed, hands suddenly illuminated perfectly by the moon. _no threat. ride only._ their signing was awful, their hands slow, and he couldn't see their face

 _where?_ wrench said.

the figure just crouched over a bit, pointed into the distance at the road straight ahead of them. wrench pointed at the suitcase - trunk? - still sitting in the middle of the road.

 _no worry,_ the figure said. _no threat._

and then, the figure leaned forward, and wrench saw their - _her_ \- face for the first time: a woman, neither young or old, with long, colorless, brittle-looking hair. she was wearing a wide-brimmed hat, and a light coat, and she was smiling strangely. she looked completely at ease, standing in the middle of a country road with heavy-looking baggage next to an idling car holding a dangerous stranger.

wrench stared at her. he motioned for the pad, she shoved it back through the crack in the window. she seemed to understand asl, but he wanted to make sure she understood his next question. why are you in the middle of nowhere at three in the morning? he wrote.

 _you?_ she said, pointing back at him, looking amused. she shoved the notepad back through the window, and her eyes settled on his abdomen, where his shirt was stained red. _husband leave me here. go see mother._

here? wes thought. in the middle of the night? the middle of nowhere? what kind of husband hates his wife that much?

 _no threat,_ she said one more time, holding both hands up. empty, and bare. no gloves in this weather? wrench thought, glancing at his own bare hands.

wrench listened to his gut. it was what had kept him alive for so long, and going against it almost always spelled mistake. it had been his gut telling him that they had to question lester nygaard further, get a full confession. it had also been his gut telling him that he and grady shouldn't split up in that blizzard, but grady had been stern. _the two of us?_ he'd said. _we can do anything, baby._ and grady had kissed him, and wrench had believed him. wasn't that funny, wasn't it so sickeningly _perfect_ , that believing grady had led to a failed job, the massacre of the closest thing he had to a family, and the death of -

he popped the trunk, which must’ve made a sound, because she seemed to perk right up. she ran back to the center of the crossroads, grabbed her trunk - suitcase? - with one hand, with ease, and started back toward the car. wrench felt the car dip, just a bit, when she put it in. he unlocked the doors, and a moment later she was sliding into the passenger seat.

wrench glared over at her before locking the doors again, and peeling away.


	6. chapter five.

grady’s cigarette was already a column of ash somehow, down to the filter. he tossed it in his empty glass, forgoing the beautiful glass ashtray, and went to light up another. chainsmoking. if only wes could see him, he’d pitch a fit… but grady needed it, needed to feel the smoke in his mouth, stinging him. needed to feel something besides guilt and regret and worry.

“punishment is worthless by itself,” the guy said. “punishment and rehabilitation need to walk hand in hand.”

_so what does that mean for me?_ grady said.

the guy stared at him, his mysterious, serene smile lifting his cheeks and edging grady into something like ease. “some get weighed differently,” he said. “you know. depending. there are all kinds of factors - some you can’t even quantify in words. some have never had a fair chance. and so, they are given one.

“you know. people like yourself,” the guy said. “people like ohanzee dent.”

_who?_ grady said after lighting his cigarette. his pack was almost empty. he wondered if the guy - shit, did he ever give a name? did he even _have_ one? - would give him more if he asked. grady glanced back down at his hand, the carton in his palm, and saw that it was full once again.

the guy shook his head. “a real tragedy, that one,” he said. “you know, he reminds me of you. or, i suppose you remind me of him.”

_i’m not a tragedy,_ grady said, staring at himself across the bar, watching his own eyes and avoiding his neck. _tragedy implies there’s something to be sad about. nothing sad about an asshole who kills for money finally getting what’s coming to him._

“hm,” the guy grunted. “you don’t understand.”

grady hissed, a poor imitation of the laugh he used to have: bitter, dark, and a little bombastic. yeah, he thought, i don’t understand why purgatory is the bar i used to pick up sad fucks in. _the only thing tragic about any of this is that i dragged wes into it,_ he said. _if it weren’t for me he’d probably have some nice life with some pretty guy, dog he always wanted. you know. i kept him from all that._

the guy stared at him. “do you think that your friend would have been better off without you?” he said.

_absolutely,_ grady said without hesitation. he knew it in his heart, had known it since wes had sent him those letters in the fall of 1982. he had never wanted to admit it, not then and not now, but it was true. wes could have had the whole world at his feet, but instead he chose to follow grady into the darkness. out of loyalty, out of some kind of fucked-up puppy love. when they were young and in over their heads, the notion had given him comfort, had made him feel special late at night when he couldn’t sleep, one of wes’s arms locked around his middle. lately, though, it had only brought him pain - i ruined him, he would think, half-hanging out their apartment window with a cigarette, i ruined you. _would’ve had a damn good life,_ he reiterated.

grady could feel the guy’s eyes on him, lingering over his temple, his jaw, his neck… grady half-heartedly tried to tug his scarf tighter around his neck. _friend,_ he said, setting his cigarette carton upright on the bar, _if you can do_ that, _can you tell me if he’s okay?_ his heart was slamming against his ribcage. he felt a tremble in his hands.

“hm,” the guy grunted again. he winked, which made grady recoil, which made him smile again, eyes crinkling handsomely. “you would know, grady. i wouldn’t have to tell you.”

 

*

 

**2006.**

 

they had been driving for two miles before wrench realized that his mysterious passenger hadn’t given him a destination. it was still dark out - the clock on the dash said 2:45 - and he hadn’t seen a car since before he picked her up. he rolled to a stop at the end of the road, parked, and said _where are you going?_

the stranger stared back at him from under the brim of her hat, mouth open. she wasn’t ugly or beautiful, she just _was_ in a way that was off-putting. finally she knit her brows and made a loose gesture, something that wrench read as _come again?_

he sighed hard and repeated himself - _where are you going?_ \- a little slower.

the stranger grinned, and wrench saw that her teeth were crooked - noticeably crooked. _see my mother,_ she said.

_where?_ he said again, annoyance teasing at him.

she shook her head, and reached for the discarded notepad. _you’ll know it when you see it,_ she wrote.

wrench ripped the paper form the notepad and crumpled it in his fist to keep himself from doing anything rash. he squeezed his fist. why did he pick this woman up? he had to _go._ he had to do what he could, what with most of fargo obliterated and grady gone. and all that he could do, it turned out, was run and try to save himself. this woman could be a liability. he could take her where she had to go, and she could see a wanted poster and turn him in - _yeah, i got a ride from this guy… yeah, a maroon mazda, he was headed north…_

the little voice in his head nudged at him. _listen to your gut,_ it said, _like you always do._

wrench took a deep breath, closing his eyes as he did so. he took a deep breath, and he held it for one, two, three, four seconds before he slowly exhaled. he used to watch grady do that, breathe and hold, before tightening his grip on his gun and throwing open the car door, ready to execute a bitch. he opened his eyes, and opened his fist, and the paper tumbled to the floor.

the stranger didn’t seem bothered by wrench’s outburst. she had the notepad in her hand again, and she was writing.

_i’m laverne,_ the notepad read when she handed it to him. he looked at her. she was flashing her crooked teeth again, a weird little sparkle in her eyes.

wrench pressed his mouth into a thin line. he considered - what did he have to lose? if his base instinct was telling him to trust her, then what could he be afraid of? no, he finally thought. if grady is dead, so is wes.

_wrench_ was written just under _laverne_ when he passed the notepad back to her. he didn’t look at her, and instead shifted back into drive. and once again, they were off, driving through the mirror-blue night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hm! i've been ~busy, i guess. but i'll always come back for these awful boys.


	7. chapter six.

**2006.**

 

it was dawn before wrench felt hungry. he hadn’t been feeling much in general, with nothing much to feel besides pain - from the gunshot wounds, from the gaping hole in his heart. but he found himself suddenly desperately hungry as the world woke around them. he felt his stomach rumble.

one of grady’s affectations used to be laying his head down on wrench’s chest, his stomach. grady had loved a lot of that softer stuff, not that he’d ever admit to it. wrench remembered sleeping in shifts on a job that turned out to be more mess and misery than it was worth in the end, much like the hess case. grady had curled up to sleep, wrench’s belly his pillow, and as soon as he fell into a light sleep, wrench’s stomach had lurched and let out what he was sure was a loud, aching rumble, and grady had woken up laughing.

wrench’s stomach growled again, and he felt laverne’s hand on his arm. he glanced over at her, and he could tell she was suppressing a laugh from the way her lips were pressed together. she was pointing out the window at a distant, weathered sign for a diner: _rayanne’s pie diner, left in 3 miles._ she raised her eyebrows.

wrench nodded tersely, replacing his eyes on the road.

it couldn’t have been later than 6:30 - and a glance at the clock on the dash told wrench it wasn’t - but rayanne’s pie diner was alight, a neon-and-pink beacon in the spectral blue light of morning. wrench executed a smooth turn, like a hot knife through butter, pulling right into a parking spot against the building with the same motion.

wrench felt his stomach rumble once more as the automatic seat belt pulled back from his chest. he glanced over at laverne, but she was already outside, stretching her arms high over her head. wrench wondered how she wasn’t cold, wasn’t shivering, clad only in a thin-looking green corduroy jacket and light, flared jeans. the only thing she was wearing that seemed remotely appropriate were her boots, and even then, they weren’t built for midwestern winter. more a southwestern summer.

looking at her, wrench got the sense that she cared more for fashion before comfort, and the notion was all too familiar to him.

even so, she must’ve been cold, because she was soon scurrying across the parking lot, hurrying into the diner.

wrench met her inside, where she idled by a clutch claw machine that flashed and blinked to greet them. she grinned at him with her ugly, crooked teeth and inclined her head, asking without asking. wrench chose a booth in the corner and folded himself into the vinyl seat. she followed.

the waitress, brown and tired-looking, up at the asscrack of dawn, brought them little laminated menus. laverne looked up at her and said something that wrench figured was “are you rayanne?” from the way the waitress then tiredly indicated her nametag, which read suzannah. then, the two of them were tittering about something while wrench stared down at the menu without reading.

laverne waved her hand to catch his eye after a moment, after suzannah had retreated. he looked at her. _what will you eat?_ she said clumsily. he just stared at her, hoping silence was answer enough before he dropped his eyes back down to the menu.

laverne knocked on the table next. wrench glared up at her, and she waved.

when suzannah came back, wrench motioned for her notepad and wrote down his order for her (two scrambled eggs, four pieces of toast, two breakfast sausages, fucking homefries, a slice of pecan pie - they were at a pie diner, after all - god, he really hadn’t realized how hungry he was). once she took laverne’s order and left, wrench got up to use the bathroom. he also hadn’t realized how bad he had to piss.

once he was done, he stood at the sink washing his hands, watching himself in the mirror, staring. he sighed, eyeing his scalp and his plain, stolen jacket. it was going to take a while for his hair to grow in again. his muttonchops would be grown and groomed long before his hair.

grady hated his hair like this, trim and barely-there. it always reminded him of those days, when they were miles and worlds apart. when wrench’s father would shave it himself, a fat cigar teetering on the edge of his lip, smoke making wrench wince and cough. grady liked his curls, liked to play with them, liked to run his fingers through them, especially on the nights when sleep was elusive.

only one other job had gone so bad. a blitz in colorado, a huge firefight and cops on their asses. they hid out in a rundown cabin for a week. grady shaved his beard and wrench shaved his head clumsily with the same razor and a pair of old scissors. it was the first time in a long time that grady had been barefaced like that, and it took nearly a decade off his face. he resented it when wrench went after his fat cheeks and pouty mouth on full display, but they made it back to fargo still as free men, so it was more than a fair price. besides, he’d leaned into the way that wrench had stroked down his face and worshipped his mouth that night in the cabin in a way that told wrench he knew that little bit of teasing was worth it.

_okay?_ laverne said once he’d stalked back to their booth.

_what?_ he said, sitting down.

_you look sad,_ she said, her sentences still rough.

wrench briefly touched his cheeks and realized that they were hot. then, he finally registered the sting in his eyes. he ignored her, and their food arrived.

  
  


_why are you sad?_ laverne tried again later, after their plates were empty. wrench’s hand was curled around the cup of coffee he’d ordered after he’d finished. he stared off to the side at the laminated dessert menu clipped to the condiment caddy at the end of the table. she slapped her hand against the table a few times, waved her hand a bit, but wrench ignored her.

eventually, she got the message and instead occupied herself with her tea.

sitting there, wrench went through his plan again: drive, and keep driving. he wanted nothing more than to turn tail, to tear back down to duluth and find malvo and rip him apart - limb from limb, piece by piece - but he had to move. grady, who spent their criminal lives together trying to keep them safe from the law, despite his own carelessness and overzealous rage at times,  would hate him if he carved a perfectly fine path to freedom only to turn back and walk himself back into trouble. would hate him if he shaved his curls for nothing.

wrench glanced up at his companion, who paid him no mind. he just had to drop her off - somewhere - and he could continue on. he remembered the heavy cargo in the trunk of the car. not for the first time, he carefully scanned laverne’s body for signs of wealth - earrings, a necklace, a ring, a watch - but much like her worn clothing, what she did wear looked tarnished and cheap. the necklace around her neck, a gold-colored chain with a matching charm of the letter D, looked foggy, dirty, flimsy. the silver ring she wore on her finger had rubbed a dark green ring into her skin. wrench was sure whatever she carried with her in that suitcase was little more than junk.

laverne sipped at her tea and looked at him. _ready to go?_ she said.

wrench downed the rest of his coffee, dropping it down on the table with a heavy clatter he didn’t hear which made their waitress whip her head around. he fished around in his pockets, and dropped a single hundred onto the table before he turned to leave, not caring to wait for laverne as he made his way back to the car in the now-bright light of the morning.


	8. chapter seven.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm all over the map with this. like, it started like a straight line and then it got all tangled in the middle. the end will be quite the detangling. definitely a bit of an unhinged vibe on my end.

**2006.**

 

wrench was nearly at the end of his rope.

with every mile that passed, well into the night, he paused to ask laverne if they were any closer to where she had to be. and every time, she smiled that ugly smile with her mouthful of crooked gray teeth and said _not yet_ or _just a little longer_ or _you’ll know it when you see it._ wrench was tired, tired of the road, of living, of her. he had no idea anymore what was keeping him awake, keeping his eyes open and on the road.

his hands were clenching the wheel so tightly he could hardly feel his palms. his jaw was clenched shut, tight, like it had been set with concrete, and there was a throbbing in his temple that he could just barely ignore. and then, of course, there was his eyes: stinging, heavy, aching. he glanced over at laverne, who was asleep with her forehead against the window, hat sitting primly over her hands in her lap. wrench was, perhaps, most tired of her hair. her hair - it was long and straight and brittle-looking. it was a mess of color. the ends were richly red, but the roots were gray, and between was a rainbow of faded red, of yellow. wrench hated it.

wrench saw his mother, walking through the front door in her long green dress that matched her eyes, her pocketbook dangling from the crook of her elbow. her hair, vivid red and tumbling over her shoulders in springy curls. the only woman wrench had ever loved -

wrench realized too late that he’d been staring at laverne and not the road. wrench realized too late that his eyelids had slid down over his eyes. he didn’t see the truck, and he didn’t hear it. he only felt it, and then they were flying, cutting through the night.

  
*

 

**197?**

 

wes sat on the cool, tiled floor of the hair salon with his legs spread, a handful of toys scattered in the v of his thighs. his mother was across the room, her eyes, green and bright, trained squarely on him as the lady with bouncy yellow hair stood with her hands gloved and buried in his mother’s curls.

he’d lost interest in the toys awhile ago, an hour ago. these appointments were long, stretching out over two hours ( _or more!_ ). he turned in his seat on the floor, and looked out the broad salon window behind him. across the street, a lady in a white dress with long, beautiful hair walked down the sidewalk, and as she walked the dark clouds that had hung over them for months parted, and the sun rained down over the town.

  
*

 

**???**

 

grady lurched suddenly. the hand holding his glass of whiskey - whiskey, scotch, bourbon, whatever it was in his glass, he didn’t get drunk; he barely even tasted it; and how tragic was that, when all he wanted to be was drunk or dead - was shaking. there was an immediate sense of doom gripping him around the shoulders, around the stomach, the neck.

he felt a faint pain in his head, which was strange to him because _why?_ he felt no pain despite the gaping gash across his throat, but a slight throb in his head?

“did - did - did?” he somehow managed to slowly croak before he set his glass down. _did something happen?_

the guy, the man - paul, he’d finally told grady, “paul marrane” - looked at him. “pardon, friend?” he said.

 _i felt something,_ grady said. _is that what you meant?_

paul raised his eyebrows. “must be,” he said.

 

*

 

**2006.**

 

wrench woke with a blink when blood dribbled into his eye.

he was still buckled sideways in place, shoulder pressed against the broken glass of his window, which was pressed to the hard-packed snow. he was dazed - it took a moment to remember where he was, _what_ he was. he stared at his hands, cut and bright red from the cold.

he looked to his right, and laverne wasn’t there. the airbag had deployed, and it hung limp from the dash. wrench thought of her hair, long and red and yellow and gray, and he thought of it heavy and wet with blood, and that was what had him scrambling to rip himself free of the automatic seatbelt across his chest.

he tugged with futility for a minute before he remembered the box cutter, stolen from a custodial closet in the hospital, an act that felt like it’d happened five years ago when, in reality, it’d only been five days. five days since malvo had thrown him a key, five days since the lady cop told him that grady was dead. he hacked through the thick straps of the seatbelt, nicking both hands with his overzealousness. and then, finally, he was lifting himself up, pulling himself through the teeth of the shattered passenger’s side window. he fell down into the snow below, and, exhausted, his burst of energy spent on himself, he laid there, eyes closed.

 

the next time wrench opened his eyes, standing over him was laverne, hair flowing freely in the breeze without her hat. she grinned down at him, barely perceptible in the dark of the night. she seemed so far away, standing above him like that. wrench tiredly swiped a hand up at her, and it didn’t even come close.

 _you’re okay,_ she said.

wrench sat up, and then he struggled to his feet, bracing himself with a hand on the carcass of the car. he dabbed at his forehead, but the cut had sealed itself. laverne looked at him smugly, haughtily, that off-putting smile still curving her mouth.

 _you’re okay,_ she said again.

wrench looked at her up and down, and narrowed his eyes. there wasn’t a scratch on her.

he noticed her eyeballing his abdomen, and it was only then that he registered the dull, faint pain. his stitches had popped.

 _it’ll take more than that to take you down,_ she said as if she knew anything about him. and that was it.

though it billowed and danced in the brisk, silvery winter wind, wrench ignored laverne’s long almost-red hair as he brandished the box cutter and slammed her against the nearest, thickest tree, blade an inch from her neck. his other hand twisted around both of her wrists, willow-thin and barely there at all. so, with his mouth he swallowed thickly and said “who are you?”

laverne smiled, and just like that, wrench recognized the woman that brought the sun back.


End file.
